Random reminder

Press, 25 October 1982, Page 20

Random reminder

SHATTERING EMOTIONS

Selling door-to-door is simple. The machine is so obviously the best available and so exactly what the customer needs that the salesman doesn't have to “sell” it — she just takes it out of the box and plugs it in. The customer forthwith produces bundles of Treasury notes and buys one. . If the customer already bought one last time the‘salesman spends minute upon minute doing , the Free Service Check and polishing the wheels. The customer forthwith remembers Granny's birthday or Nephew’s weeding and produces bundles of Treasury notes and buys another. In either case — demonstrating the new or servicing the old — there is a point where five metres of fully retractable flex are pulled from the splendidlydesigned hole in the back wheel.. The salesman's eyes look for a three-pin

socket. Her foot holds down the release pedal. Her arm. festooned with flex, rises high. It is all a bit like St George disembowelling a dragon. What the salesman should not do, with or without enthusiasm, is allow her uppermost hand, with or without flex, to come into contact with overhead light fittings, with or without triple fancy imported cut-crystal lantern glasses.

the customer’s attention and interest is wholly-gained, but not in the textbook way. The carpet and the machine look like Kristallnacht. The salesman shakes Kristall-fragments from her hair. There is only one thing to do. The salesman must forthwith produce bundles of Treasury notes from her pocket or purse and hand them over.

She will then vacuum up the glass, of course, and carry on with the sale.